Take a stab at an argument against software piracy

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

A little background: My husband is paid solely in software royalties. The program is pricey (about $2500 or so) and while not easy to crack, there are versions out there. Every lost sale is less money in the greedy grubby little hands of yours truly. Thus, I take a pretty dim view of software piracy. Every so often when I'm feeling cranky, I browse the usenet board for fans of this software and address the punks who are bragging about their ripped-off copy.

It seems to be news to some people that you might be ripping off an actual person instead of just a big huge company. But I've heard this more than once: "I'm a poor student. I would never have bought the program anyway because I can't afford it, so it's NOT a lost sale." Well, it still bugs me. It's still stealing, using something proprietary that you didn't pay for. Other than the wagging of the finger and saying it's wrong, are there other arguments for why this sort of piracy is wrong? I ponder this in off moments, and would be interested to see others take a stab at it. Especially after the great thread about skimming a buck off of people's bank accounts.

[kinoons]

A wonderful computer game company, Looking Glass, closed its doors this week. It made some great games, but didnt make enough money. I just have to wonder howmany pirated copies of those great games are out there. If those games were actually purchased, would the company still be open, making good computer games?

[Lost]

Cranky, I am with you 100%. I own copyrights on artistic designs, and am numb from trying to explain copyright ownership to idiots who should know better.

I can't even make myself address the issue anymore - I just gave up. It is heartbreaking because it *is* your family income (mine was just a little sideline) but maybe equating it to not getting paid for their work or overtime might help. Intellectual property rights are so misunderstood by the masses.

How 'bout this for the 'poor student': "Please photocopy all the cash in your pocket and keep the photocopy and send me the cash. It's all the same, right?" (yes, I know this is illegal - I am just kidding)

Sorry to rant - it's been a bad day!

M

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

That's sad--and a valid question. Aforementioned spouse wrote a plug-in for the program that he thought about selling but decided to make shareware. It was downloaded over 1500 times. NOT ONE PERSON ever sent him the suggested shareware price! And it's not that people tried it and decided it wasn't good--it was a good utility, gets mentioned in guides, and eventually was incorporated as a regular feature in a later release.

Hang on, I gotta go smack him again for not putting a timer thing on it.

[scr4]

As one of those poor students, I can understand their view. For many of us, the choice is not pirate or buy, but pirate or not use. Or sometimes, pirate or use it on slow and crowded school computers. I can only say that I hope more software publishers would meet us halfway by providing affordable academic pricing.

[tcburnett]

Hey, Crank....

Send me a copy of the software and I'll crack it for you. Even better, put a 'timer thingy' on it.

"Thank you God, for teaching me assembly".

[brachyrhynchos]

I've paid my $15 for a screensaver, $30 for a canasta game, $$ for a zip utility, photo archive, etc. Money has gone into stat programs, graphing programs, GSI, cad, Office and others, some of which street price was paid, others at site license rates. Why? Major reason is the OP - there are people whose income partially or wholly depends on it. This goes whether it is an independent selling shareware or a large company selling shrinkwrap. How do you think the janitor gets paid? Pirated copies do not help him pay the dentists' bill. Minor reason - I could get my ass canned if found with pirated software on computers purchased with university money.

Something that gets my goat is after I set someone's computer up, they ask if they need to get a site license for, say Office 2000. I'll stare for a few seconds at them and then say, "It's only $65." That's cheap. That's why you add a software line in your grant budget (of several hundred thousand dollars). And these prices are available for both faculty, staff, and students.

If they are a student and absolutely need a special program for a class, then they can demand that the prof place a copy on that old, slow departmental computer.

[sailor]

It seems to be news to some people that you might be ripping off an actual person instead of just a big huge company.

Well, in a way you've put your finger on it. You seem to imply *if it was* a big huge company, then it would be OK. Stealing from MS is not really stealing is it? I have news for you, big companies are made of people who earn a salary and you are taking it from people just like yourselves. It is just as bad to steal from them as from you.

Because if I get to decide it's not stealing if I think I need it more than you do, then *I* draw the line and you have no say. Besides, do you expect people to ask for the balance sheet of the manufacturer before they pirate something?

An ironic thought is that many of these software pirates of today expect to make a living tomorrow making software. You'll see how fast their view of things changes.

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

I don't think that way, sailor, but I suspect that's a justification the average person with pirated software lives with: "Oh, so who cares if this huge big corporation has a few thousandths of a cent less to distribute to shareholders?" They feel guiltier when they think they might actually be taking food off a real person's table.

Here's another one I've heard: "If I use this pirated software, I'll become a loyal user and then when I join the working world, my being a user will promote future sales of (i.e. I'll buy a non-cracked copy, my employers will buy it, etc.)" Which is, of course, a viable outcome and the major reason why I think software companies are eager to discount their software to educational institutions. This doesn't give me a warm squishy feeling to the pirater, however.

[sailor]

As I say, it is ironic that students of computer science hope to make a living writing software while they steal away other software. They are promoting a practice that will harm *them* more than anybody else. But it is that feeling of "if I do it to someone else, it is OK but if they do it to me, then it's wrong!".

[handy]

I have a stack here of 20 cdroms that I bought, original software, etc. These 20 are ones I have to give away because I couldn't find much use for them. What a waste of money.

On the other hand, Microsoft Windows is the most pirated software in the world and look how successful they are!

Gates said in his history of Microsoft that his earliest Dos was pirated a lot & that was why it was so successful.

[Usurer]

Like Gates didn't steal the Windows environment from Apple Computer...

[RealityChuck]

On the other hand, Microsoft Windows is the most pirated software in the world and look how successful they are!

Source for this little tidbit? AFAIK, nearly all copies of Windows came installed on the computer and pirating is extremely rare.

"I'm a poor student. I would never have bought the program anyway because I can't afford it, so it's NOT a lost sale."

An infurating little rationalization, isn't it? Sort of like saying, "I'm a poor student. I wouldn't have bought a Cadillac because I couldn't afford it, so it's OK to steal one."

[Harmonious Discord]

I won't use pirated software, nor will I give it to somebody. The people that put the work into making the software, need to get paid just as I do.

That goes for the music too. I won't burn somebody a copy of a music cd either.

[Gatsby]

Originally posted by Usurer
Like Gates didn't steal the Windows environment from Apple Computer...

Like Jobs didn't steal MacOS from Xerox...

[MadPoet]

Like Gates didn't steal the Windows environment from Apple Computer
Like Jobs didn't steal the idea from Xerox...

Anyways, to me there is a line as to what I would condone pirating. It has to do with the use of the product. A game is made to entertain me. And when I use it, I am hopefully entertained. A program such as Autocad or Photoshop are made to create a sellable product (and as such are far more expensive). When I use them, it's out of curiosity and a desire to learn how to use them.

And that's the line. I buy games. If I don't like them, I take them back. But if I decide I'm going to learn Autocad, I'm not going to go buy a copy of Autocad. I'm going to steal a copy and learn how to use it, then hopefully go get a job where they have a legal copy to work on professionally.

I understand the legal aspects. The question is the morality, and at what point the action becomes stealing. And to me, that is when I start using the product for its intended purpose. Autodesk does not lose money on me dicking around and making a mockup of my room, and can only gain by me learning to use the product and buying it as a professional. Id, however, does lose if I were to pirate Quake, as I might have purchased it had it not been pirated, as I am the intened consumer of the product.

[Diceman]

I have nothing to add execpt that I was majorly upset when Looking Glass Studios went out of business. I was really looking forward to Thief 3 :(

[MadPoet]

Sniff... I knew I should never have let my friend "borrow" System Shock 2... I knew he'd copy it... and now look! They're gone! Lost in the annals of PC history because I help contribute to piracy.

It is a damn shame though. They made some of the best games ever for the PC. I blame EA.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Piracy is theft. Theft is wrong. You souldn't think that was such a hard concept for people to internalize.

Madpoet -- you are using those autocad programs to gain a benefit for yourself without providing fair recompense for the developers of the program. Your "intended use" argument seems to me to be a flimsy rationalization for your desire to gain a benefit that you cannot afford to provide for yourself. It is not particularly distinct from the poor student's whine, "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so you haven't lost a sale."

[Mr2001]

Piracy is theft. Theft is wrong. You souldn't think that was such a hard concept for people to internalize.

My justification is that "stealing" software is different from stealing a physical product. If I steal a car from the lot, the dealer has one less car to sell. Similarly, if I steal a copy of Office off the shelf at CompUSA, the store has one less copy to sell.

But if I download Office at home from a warez site, and I wouldn't have bought it anyway (as a starving student), no one loses money - the software is still on the shelves. The only difference between the pre-piracy scenario and the post-piracy scenario is that there's a copy of Office on my system that wasn't there before. I won't buy a copy now that I have it, but I wouldn't have bought it before.

Now, I still think it's questionable that I'm going against the authors' intentions by using the software without paying for it.. but that doesn't bother me much.

[Callina]

scr4
As one of those poor students, I can understand their view. For many of us, the choice is not pirate or buy, but pirate or not use.

Replace the word "pirate" with the word "steal". Same activity, but doesn't quite sound as acceptable. Having been a poor student and now living as a poor teacher, I cannot accept pirating other people's work. The choice for a reasonable poor student would be to buy or not buy. Just because I want something that I can't afford doesn't mean that I get to steal it.

Mr2001
But if I download Office at home from a warez site, and I wouldn't have bought it anyway (as a starving student), no one loses money - the software is still on the shelves. The only difference between the pre-piracy scenario and the post-piracy scenario is that there's a copy of Office on my system that wasn't there before.

There is an additional post-piracy scenario - now you are a criminal. Regardless of your opinion, the decision of ownership is not in the hands of the consumer. If the person/company who developed the software maintains ownership (charging a price for distribution), you have no legal or moral right to assume ownership. It belongs to someone else, period. No matter how easy it is to steal, how cheap you are, or how little you regard thievery. I have heard people justify their crimes by saying that if the software belonged to them, they wouldn't mind if poor people copied it. Who cares? It doesn't belong to them, they have no right to take it.

[jamshid]

SpiritusMundi said:
Your "intended use" argument seems to me to be a flimsy rationalization for your desire to gain a benefit that you cannot afford to provide for yourself.

Sounds like a dot-com IPO strategy to me :p

[Lynn Bodoni]

There's another effect of all these pirates, too...now the software companies have to put in security, which drives the cost of the software up. The programmers COULD be using that ingenuity to make a more useful or more entertaining product, but instead they have to think up better ways to protect the software from being cracked. Or at least, cracked so easily.

I'm sick of all these people who steal. Sick of it. Oh, and Cranky? Do a search on "Napster" on this site, and I'll bet you'll find many of the same arguments, pro and con. Some people just don't want to recognize that they are stealing, or just don't care.

[Mister Armageddon]

Here's a scenario that hasn't been brought up, but I think it's fairly common:

All right, let's suppose I want a particular video game for an older system that's no longer on the market. Let's also suppose that the company that put the game out no longer markets it, and in fact hasn't for years. The way I see it, there are two options:

1. Search the Internet or in the bargain bin of a software store for a used copy, and hope that said copy isn't defective due to heavy use.

2. Download an emulator and the ROM for the game.

Either way, the company that produced the game GETS NO MONEY FROM ME. Of course, the first one is legal and the second isn't, not that that would necessarily stop many people. When I look at the ethics, though, I don't see a problem. (And if the game is rereleased later for another system, you can always delete it from your hard drive and buy the real thing.)

So, am I the only one that thinks this way?

[Johnny Angel]

I don't expect to convince anybody who has already made up their mind, but the fact is that this is not a simple issue. There is a great deal of ambiguity, and degrees of righteousness on both sides.

It is a valid argument, as CrankyAsAnOldMan recognizes, that a person who wouldn't have a piece of software if it wasn't free isn't going to reward the developer's hard work whether pirates it or just does without.

It is also the case that buying a used copy, off of eBay, for example, does not profit the developer. So if the profit of the developer is the issue that determines the morality of piracy, selling your legally purchased software is just as deep a sin.

As to whether it's theft, legally it is definitely theft. Whether it's morally theft is a very different issue. It's a tricky issue, which CrankyAsAnOldMan recognizes, but I'm afraid that some others here don't. Spiritus Mundi seems to think it's a simple issue. Callina thinks you can replace the word `pirate' with the word `steal' and the difference is merely rhetorical. Lynn Bodoni believes that piracy puts an undue expense on companies to develop security measures, which I don't belive is a significant portion of development cost, since there are only a few copy protection schemes out there, which are already known and implemented. Furthermore, these don't drive up the cost of software in most cases because the company is already charging what it can get away with charging.

I'm a computer gamer, but I haven't played a pirated game in years. Most of my piracy dates back to the days of the Commodore 64 and the Amiga, when I could barely even afford the disks. I certainly couldn't afford the actual games. It was a struggle for my parents to get me any computer at all, and I did get a great deal of mileage out of writing my own programs. But should I have kept only to what I could write myself if I couldn't afford to buy a program that cost a fair portion of what the computer itself cost? Is that a privelege only for the kids whose parents didn't work at a factory? Drive a hack? Legally, yes. Morally, are you that sure? Spiritus Mundi is awfully damn sure. "Piracy is theft." But I'm not.

These days, I buy more games than anybody else I know. I'm not rich, but I've got enough money to afford the luxury of the slim, and I mean very slim, moral righteousness of owning legal copies of every game I play. Often, I take a certain delight in knowing that the people who developed software I like are being rewarded for it. Yet, often my legitimate copies of games are bought second hand, or bought cheaply after the program is no long a best seller. Have I taken food out of children's mouth by waiting until Lands of Lore II dropped to $30 rather than buying it at $50?? If benefiting the producer is the only reason to pay for software, I sure as hell didn't do Looking Glass Studios any favors by buying System Shock 2 off of eBay. Now they're out of business. I gave them just as much money as a pirate would have, i.e., none, for those of you slow on the draw. So, is it my fault? Should I feel guilty? Legally, no. Morally, that's a different story. But does it fall under what Spiritus Mundi tarrs as theft with such a splayed brush? It's legal, after all. Here's another concept that people find hard to internalize, Spiritus Mundi -- ambiguity.

I don't mean to pick on Spiritus Mundi in particular. This isn't the first time I've seen a poster act like morality breaks down into bumper sticker slogans. This attitude arises every time the subject of Napster comes up. Somebody always prefers to be righteous over being circumspect, but I understand that I am of a very queer breed that prefers the latter. Please forgive my forgiveness.

[Lizard]

It sounds like a lot of respondents here are confusing ILLEGAL with IMMORAL. As several have pointed out, they are not always the same thing. The way business operates in our country, you are free to make money off your product if you can. Obviously, until it became very easy to make copies of music (like within the last 30 years) or programs (the last 10) pirating was a non-issue. And whole businesses built up around providing music and programs. But society has changed, and now the downside of how our economy works has descended on this business. They obviously don't like it one bit. But that's irrelevant. People will not pay money for something they want or need and can get for free. You can call it "stealing" but it is not stealing in the sense that most people are taught to think stealing is. As a previous poster pointed out, you are making a new copy, not taking the original. Most people (myself included) never think they are stealing when they copy music or a program. It may legally be stealing, but not morally. This might lead to the death of the software and music industries as we know them, but so what? Their market share was not ordained by God. Going into business is a risk, and sometimes it doesn't pan out. One way or another, the Republic will survive, and probably no individual will find himself destitute forever over this.
Complaining about pirating is like trying to hold back the wind with your fingers. Instead of complaining, those affected by it should be planning for a future where their current jobs will be irrelevant or non-existent. They would be a lot better off when that day comes.

[brachyrhynchos]

Sorry, Drainthelizard, I cannot agree. Society has changed? Does this mean we've decided not to pay someone like Cranky's husband for his work simply because we can get it through copying the disks and this has made stealing acceptable? Does this mean because it is simple to download a shareware program through the internet and try it out that we are not morally obligated to compensate the designer of that program if we decide to use it?

Maybe society needs to change to keep up with our changing technology. Evidently as technology becomes more open and available, some will justify their actions without considerations to the real humans they hurt. Oh, and you said "Instead of complaining, those affected by it should be planning for a future where their current jobs will be irrelevant or non-existent". Okay, who is going to write the code for those program you want to steal?

[yosemite]

I understand where Johnny Angel is coming from.

I buy most of my software first-hand, namely, in the store. But when I got my old used PowerMac, I found that the newest software wouldn't run on it - too powerful for my old, creaky computer. So I bought up older versions of software on eBay. As I mentioned on a thread I started a few days ago - I bought a copy of Illustrator 6 on eBay, and tried to register it with Adobe. (It still had the registration card intact - I just hoped it wasn't registered yet.) But, alas, the serial number "belonged" to someone else. However, I had paid good money for it (and it wasn't that cheap, believe me) and I was going to use it. The person I talked to at Adobe tried to suggest that it wouldn't install because I didn't own the reg. number. But it did work, I paid honest money for it, and I'm using it. Dammit. I just got an iMac, and I installed it on that. Do I feel like a thief? Nope. And I'm even thinking of buying an upgrade to Illustrator and installing that.

Yes, there are a lot of grey areas to this. I don't think that out-and-out pirating of software because you are too damned cheap to buy it is right, though. And I understand where Cranky is coming from.

[Lizard]

brachyrhynchos, you need to re-read my post. Or maybe I should explain it a little differently. My point was that MOST people don't see anything morally wrong with copying a program. You can call it "stealing" if you want, but most people don't make that moral distinction. Think of premarital sex as an an analogy. It used to be really taboo, but now everybody does it. Pirating software is the same social dynamic in reverse. Nobody thinks it really wrong, so everybody does it. It would/will take a massive shift in public morality for this situation to change, which I don't see happening. The question is not whether its "right" or "wrong" that Cranky's husband loses money, the question is whether he is capable of making any money at all in this business climate. I think the answer is, in the long run, no. The honor system doesn't work when there is an abundance of chances for abuse. I could see a business world where complicated software will be custom-made for the customer, and that customer will be held responsible if pirated copies of that program ever surface. Common software like MSWOrd will be public domain, either in fact or in practice. (It practically is already.) Either this will happen, or we'll keep muddling through the way we have so far. I think the people who are happy with the current situation outnumber the people who are getting ripped off. So maybe it won't change at all. Hmmm.

[rjk]

For common kinds of software (a word processor or an OS, for example) piracy isn't even necessary these days!

There are lots of "open-source" programs around that will cover most needs: Linux, Star Office, graphics apps (2D and 3D), communications apps, compilers, and on and on.

Even if many people don't see piracy as being wrong, it is illegal. Why take the risk of being busted?

[brachyrhynchos]

I'm not sure that I'd agree with you that most people think it's ethical to take software without paying for it. They hide behind excuses all the time: "It's too expensive." "It's a big company - they won't miss the profits." "When I get a REAL job, I'll buy the software." If they thought there was nothing wrong with it, then they'd say so. Well, maybe my perception of people is wrong and times have changed.

However, I don't think I would buy software if I were held legally responsible for seeing that it is not pirated. You yourself say that the majority of people see nothing wrong with pirating software (I'm not sure what the percentage is - you have a cite?). If it is so pervasive, then I could be opening myself and my company to danger. I might not be able to afford to lose my business in a lawsuit or pay penalties. (Perhaps I could hire Cranky's husband to write code for my company.)

As for the common packages being readily available - you're right. Most computers come with those, and you pay for them at the time of purchase.

[DougC]

- - - Windows is probably the most pirated software. Obviously, it's pretty difficult to get solid numbers here, but aside from Japan & Australia, pretty much the entire eastern half of the planet doesn't buy legitimate retail versions of anything that comes on a cassette, videotape or CD ROM. Since you need Windows to run anything else, and you only get Windows if you buy OEM or buy it retail, I'd bet it is. (Yea I know - you don't need Windows, but for most users it is still currently the only practical choice.) - MC